Southwest may furlough 1,300 BWI employees by next spring
Southwest Airlines could furlough nearly 1,300 of its workers at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport by this spring due to reduced air travel brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
The airline — BWI’s largest carrier — filed a new Work Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, last week that shows its plans to furlough 1,181 employees who work at the Anne Arundel County airport by March 15. The notice comes less than a month after the company announced it could furlough an additional 106 employees by Jan. 25.
Southwest employs almost 4,500 workers at BWI and is the third-largest private employer in the county, according to the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation.
If the furloughs occur, they will not affect current service at BWI and will be a temporary means to address costs related to a drop in demand for air travel, an airline spokesperson said.
Southwest has been negotiating with its union representatives since October to help offset what it said will be more than $1 billion in overstaffing costs next year, said Russell McCrady, Southwest’s vice president of labor relations, in a statement.
But a lack of progress in those talks has led Southwest to issue WARNnotices last week to 6,828 workers across its system of 58,000 employees, McCrady said.
“We are willing to continue negotiations quickly to preserve jobs if we can achieve the support that allows Southwest to combat the ongoing economic challenges created by the decline in demand for air travel,” he said.
Speaking last month to the Greater Baltimore Committee, Southwest CEO Gary C. Kelly said the
need for layoffs also could be eased if airlines get further relief from Congress in another coronavirus relief bill.
Charles Cerf, the president of the Transportation Workers Union Local 555, which represents around 200 Southwest workers at BWI at risk of furlough, said the union has already provided cost savings to the company in the range of $100 million, including early retirements and extended leave this year and in 2021.
“We hope there can be [an agreement], but we’re not going to give up decades of collective bargaining to help them during a temporary crisis,” said Cerf, adding that the proposed furloughs would be the first in Southwest’s history.
“During 9/11, [Operation] Desert Storm and all the other crises in this country, we’ve never had furloughs where you were forced to leave the company,” he said.
In September, BWI’s total passenger traffic — arriving, departing and connecting passengers — fell 60% to 848,579, down from 2,139,465 in September 2019. Prior to the pandemic, the airport was on track to set a new annual record for passenger traffic, said BWI spokesperson Jonathan Dean said.
In April, at the peak of the spring surge in coronavirus
cases, passenger numbers dropped 96% compared to the year prior, Dean said.
More recent data from November and the first nine days of December collected by the Transportation Security Administration shows departing passengers were down63% and 65%, respectively, compared to the same periods last year. This data does not include arriving or connecting passengers.
Southwest’s announcement could be a sign that employers across Maryland are tightening their belts as coronavirus cases continue to rise throughout the state. The state reported 2,616 newcoronavirus cases and 51 more deaths Friday as hospitalizations reached a new high of 1,729.
Employment gains made through the summer and fall could be slowing down as a result, said Alex Marre, regional economist at the Baltimore branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
“We’ve seen leisure and hospitality hit hard during this pandemic and have heard from manybusinesses that they have cut travel back or out entirely,” Marre said. “Airports, hotels and restaurants are all suffering. Each job loss has ripple effects through the economy, as lost wages translate to lost local demand for goods and services.”